al-
Ṭūr

(2,266 words)

(a.), a word with the basic sense of “mountain”.

It occurs ten times in the Ḳurʾān (II, 60/63, 87/93; IV, 153/154; XIX, 53/52, etc.), on two occasions (XXIII, 20; XCV, 2) expressly coupled with Sīnāʾ/ Sīnīn, specifically meaning Mount Sinai. Virtually all its occurences in the Ḳurʾān are connected with the wanderings of the Children of Israel in the Sinai Desert [see banū isrāʾīl; sīnāʾ; al-tīh]. It was early recognised by the Arabic philologists as a loan word from Hebrew or Aramaic (cf. Hebr. ṣūr “rock” > “cliff”, Aram, ṭūrā “mountain”), more proximately, from Syriac (see A. Jeffery, The f…